Crystallised Rose Petals

Two of our friends recently celebrated their engagement with a party, and I wanted to bring something as a gift. She is super-crafty and loves baking, and I thought maybe it would be fun to bring crystallised rose petals, perfect for topping cakes. I have a huge range of roses in the garden so I tried a few varieties:

I used this recipe, and even with a hundred rose petals, I didn't get through a cup of sugar and an egg white. I also found it too fiddly to use tweezers and just picked up the petals by hand. I would like to try simply painting them with sugar syrup next time. All of the varieties were tasty, but for some reason the white roses became very fragile and stuck to the tray completely. The red simple roses worked the best, while the magenta and orange roses were somewhere in between. Better than greaseproof paper are silicon baking tray liners: they provided the best non-stick surface. It's also important to wait a good 24 hours before attempting to remove the petals.

Overall they made a lovely combination of colours, and I gave them to my friend in a jar, separated with layers of greaseproof paper:

Also, once you've made them, don't let them get above about 25C. They can collapse and go sticky, as I found a week later when I checked on the jar of offcuts I stored in a top cupboard.

Nasu Dengaku

This time, with an amazing photo:

The original recipe is here.

Dark 'n' Stormy Salmon

Feeling considerably better today, and trying to stay with it by DOING ALL THE THINGS. This includes inventing new meals in between walking in the Perth hills and playing board games with new friends. I was going to dress this salmon fillet simply with soy sauce and lime zest when the ginger in the fridge caught my eye. I thought it would go well with the lime zest. Then I remembered we had a bottle of rum somewhere - and that goes well with both lime and ginger. And what tops all of that off is a dash of brown sugar - all the ingredients you need for a dark n stormy cocktail! So I figured out a method and put it all together, and served it with some simply stir-fried pak choi and plain white rice. Lovely.

Everything is under control.

Ingredients:

• a couple of plump salmon fillets
• a generous thumb of ginger
• one fat juicy lime, preferably unwaxed
• 1 heaped dessert spoon of brown sugar
• 50ml rum
• matches

Check over your fillets for any bones. BBQ or pan-fry, skin-side down, until the skin is crispy and golden. Turn and sear the other side until golden. Remove immediately.

I should get massively jet-lagged more often.

Meanwhile, peel and finely chop the ginger. Zest the lime, and finely chop the zest. Put the ginger, lime zest and sugar in a very small heavy reduction pan and cook until the sugar begins to melt. Turn off the heat. Measure out the rum, and light a match. Pour the rum into the hot pan with one hand, then bring in the match with the other. The alcohol vapour should catch and you should end up with a merry little flame in your pan for a minute or so.

When the flame goes out, juice in half of the lime. Pour over the salmon and serve with the remaining lime half cut into wedges.